Switching gears

Up to this point, I've been selling the tactic of passive aggressive play as the main poker strategy in tournament play. That is, to sit and wait for a strong hand then allow your opponents to make the aggressive play against that strong hand.

This tactic works very well in big tables of 9 or 10 players. As the table dwindles to fewer players however, the more aggressive you need to become. By the time it comes down to heads-up play, you are no longer just playing your cards but must now also be playing your opponent.

What does that mean?

If you have been paying attention at how your opponents play, after a few hands or so, you should have a read of how they play. Whether they are tight, loose, a bingo-player, etc. The general idea is, when you are down to a few players, you are no longer just betting on your cards but are now betting against theirs.

To illustrate, if the table is down to a final three, if I am the first to act against two tight players, I would raise at least the blind amount even if I hit nothing after the flop. It doesn't even matter what hand I have, this is me not betting on my hand but betting my opponents have not hit anything on the flop. I am wary of course of the tight player who re-raise in this situation. I'd take the loss and get out of the hand.

Against an aggressive player, you are now counter-punching. You are now betting whether he is bluffing or not. And this is a lot more difficult. Which is precisely the reason why aggression, applied correctly at the end game of tournament play, is often rewarded.

Comments moderation

Hello everyone. I've not been updating this blog much lately, been busy with other stuff in life. Anyway when I came back to check on things here, I find that people have been spamming the comments section with links to phishing websites. There are NO FREE MILLIONS CHIPS. Not even zynga poker chips. I've deleted these links. I hope I have deleted them all (I will double-check later). At any rate, new house rule, any and all comments are now subject to approval by the moderator (me). If nothing else, I will not let this blog become host to these scammers. Lost 25 million zynga chips to them. I have not played zynga poker until now. Not even the other account with 13 million chips. As to my poker zero account, the checks sent to me cleared! Yey! Made a total of 110.50 USD to date (30% went to US Federal tax). Sadly, I have not been winning lately. Like I said, I've been a little busy, feeling a bit harassed and no patience whatsoever to win a long tourney style poker event. Must remind myself that poker is a game of patience punctuated by well-timed moment of extreme aggression. Well, once I have the time, I know I can win another Benjamin or two, totally free.

Check in the mail

It took an extra month more than the two months I was warned it would take for my first check from Zen Entertainment's Zero Poker to come. But after three months, it is finally here. Wooohooo! 

I win again

This time in a smaller field (just a little over 100) and for a smaller prize just a mere 10 USD (lol). It was good practice though as I am trying out this new poker theory. Well as you can see, it worked. Nearly got killed when my full-boat was beat by an even bigger full-boat. Good thing I was in the chip lead when that fluke happened. Even then, that chopped my chip count to half. Got to the final table ranked 8th. And so mostly I let the big-stack bully eliminate most of the table. Then I played catch-up in the heads-up with him having around 80% of the chips. Zynga shootout strategy worked like a charm. Played aggressive from the bottom to quickly even up, then one all-in bet was it took to bring him down.

Can't play as much as I want due to work demands. And as of now, I can't get past the donk-fest early in the tourneys. That's the real killer. Need to develop an even more effective strategy to get out of the gates. For as long as I can get mid-game with a healthy chip count, I am confident of getting into the final table. Donks do get lucky. As Phil Helmuth once said "If not for luck, I would win every tournament." But hey, that's poker.

Oh yeah, what's the new poker theory? Play less hands. Fold more. And when I raise, I raise it like a MAN! No sense raising if it can't hurt the other guy. Other than that, default play is still passive-aggressive. Let the other players commit the mistakes that will give me their chips.

Hacked

My Zynga poker chips has been hacked, all 25 million of them. And this is the second time. I believe I have followed every sensible precaution to prevent hacking so this is getting ridiculous. So yeah, if having that many chips on my Facebook account gives hackers the reason to screw with my FB account, I believe I will forego playing Zynga poker for awhile, until Zynga or Facebook set-up better security. 

Don't be a donk

General rule: never re-raise (except on the river). If you believe you have the best hand, and you got raised, call. Re-raising at any time except on the river is a donk bet. Re-raising potentially ruins the possibity of winning more chips in the end. Re-raising with the strongest hand invites the original raiser to fold. And will almost certainly make the rest of players on the table fold. Remember the first principle of poker, it is not how many hands you win but how many chips you get in the hands that you win.

An exception to the rule is when you flopped flush with small hole cards, and you want to end the hand before the turn. Personally, even in this scenario, I do not re-raise.